Didymus The Blind - Catechetical School of Alexandria

Catechetical School of Alexandria

Upon entering the service of the Church he was placed at the head of the Catechetical School of Alexandria, where he lived and worked. According to Palladius, the 5th-century bishop and historian, Didymus remained a layman all his life and became one of the most learned ascetics of his time. He counted among his pupils Palladius, Rufinus, Evagrius, and Jerome, who mentions in his letters that he "wrote to Didymus calling him my master" and defends this tutelage as one of a man "both old and learned."

Universalist historians including Hosea Ballou and J. W. Hanson have claimed that Didymus taught universal salvation, on the basis of Didymus' statement that "in the liberation of all no one remains a captive! At the time of the Lord's passion the devil alone was injured by losing all of the captives he was keeping.", and his belief that divine punishment is remedial in nature.

Jerome, who often spoke of Didymus not as the blind but as "the Seer," wrote that Didymus "surpassed all of his day in knowledge of the Scriptures" and Socrates of Constantinople later called him "the great bulwark of the true faith". Didymus was viewed as an orthodox Christian teacher and was greatly respected and admired up until at least 553.